Outdoor Notebook: Anglers asked to report marked and tagged fish

The DNR is encouraging Great Lakes anglers who catch marked and tagged fish to report them.

The agency has used coded-wire tags on various fish species since the 1980s, to help determine the shares of naturally reproduced fish versus stocked fish, and lakewide movement of fish.

A small, coded-wire tag is inserted into the snout of a fish; the small, fleshy adipose fin just ahead of the tail is then clipped off so the fish can be identified as tagged. An angler catching a tagged fish can record information about it, remove and freeze the fish’s snout, and drop it off at a designated location, listed on the DNR’s website at Michigan/gov/dnr

The DNR, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, coded-wire tags all lake trout, Chinook and Atlantic salmon stocked into lakes Huron and Michigan, as well as some rainbow trout (steelhead) from the Au Sable River.

An angler returning a coded-wire tagged fish to the DNR receives a letter describing the history of the fish caught (such as stocking location and age).

To learn more, visit michigan.gov/taggedfish

Camp scholarships available

Scholarships are available through SCI-Novi and the Riley Foundation, to the Michigan United Conservation Clubs’s Michigan Out-of-Doors (MOOD) Youth Camp at the Cedar Lake Outdoor Center in Chelsea.

Michigan Operation Freedom Outdoors (MiOFO)’s first annual David Pollie Classic essay contest will award an all-terrain wheelchair to someone with a medical need for such a device and with no other means of obtaining it.

The contest is named for the late David Pollie, who became paralyzed in his youth but continued outdoor pursuits.

Contest participants (or family or friends) submit a short essay or video detailing why the contest entrant deserves the tracked wheelchair. Entries are due June 30; details at www.miofo.org

Updated info on stream fish

The DNR has updated its web application tracking trends in abundance, growth and survival of fish populations in more than 40 selected streams across Michigan — including the North Branch of the Tobacco in Clare County, and the Chippewa in Isabella County.

The three-year-old app summarizes data collected from a network of fish population survey sites, with data for some sites going back to 1947.

What do you do if you set a Michigan fish record? If you’re Roy Beasley of Madison Heights, you go back and beat it.

The DNR said Beasley set the new mark for bigmouth buffalo on May 13 with a 27-pound, 35.25-inch fish that he arrowed while bowfishing, easily beating the mark that he’d set in 2008 with a 24.74-pound bigmouth buffalo from the Detroit River, also bowfishing.

Drones forbidden at wildfires

Rules you never saw coming? Maybe this one: the DNR reminded operators of drones and similar devices that the aircraft can’t be used near Michigan wildfires.

The Unmanned Aircraft Systems Act prohibits operating a drone in a way that interferes with the official duties of firefighters, police, paramedics or search and rescue personnel, the DNR said in a news release.

Kevin Jacobs, DNR aviation manager, said a drone at a wildfire could constitute a safety hazard dire enough to ground spotter and fire suppression aircraft, hampering fire containment and putting firefighters and others at risk.